AI-based traffic referrals were up 357% year-over-year back in June 2025 [1]. There’s no shortage of experts gatekeeping the secret behind a paid service to gain visibility in AI Results. You’ll typically see these presentations coupled with big claims like “Increase your ecommerce sales by 5,000% by following this one trick” or “Google can’t stop this ecommerce AI hack.” I’m seeing a lot of people ask what’s behind the mysterious force behind AI rankings. While there’s plenty of snake oil available online claiming otherwise, there really is no secret. There is, however, strategic work that must be performed and executed tactfully.
AI Traffic and Its Growth
First, a quick review of AI traffic. ChatGPT continues to dominate AI referral traffic, while Gemini shows much faster year-over-year growth (approximately 388% YoY from Sept-Nov ’24 vs Sept-Nov ’25) [2]. Digiday reports that, in the same period, ChatGPT’s monthly active users rose about 5% to 810 million users, while Gemini’s grew 30% to 346 million users.
While those numbers are impressive, it’s also important to keep in mind that AI referral traffic currently accounts for only around 1% of overall traffic on average. Consumer staples and information technology are two sectors that outperform the average, while industries like communication services, financials, and utilities are well below the benchmark [2][3].
According to the Pew Research Center, approximately 18% of Google searches in March 2025 produced an AI summary. Of those users, 58% viewed at least one AI summary. Users who saw an AI summary clicked a link 8% of the time, compared with 15% for those who didn’t [4].
Secrets Revealed
So, what’s the secret to ranking in GEO, AIO, SEO, or whatever label the industry is using this month? 🤫 Essentially, it boils down to two key items: high-quality, valuable content and an excellent user experience [5].
There, I said it. That’s it. Or is it?
In actuality, there are no hidden secrets. Success comes from disciplined application of quality content, good UX, and technical clarity.
Let’s unpack this a bit. How do you achieve these goals? From a 30,000-foot view, it seems simple, right? However, the nuances may overshadow the feasibility of doing everything yourself. With these tips, you can improve your site’s ranking and enable AI bots to more easily extract content with a better understanding, increasing the likelihood of ranking in search engine results and being surfaced in AI search summaries.
(Side note, this is where an agency like 36 comes into play 😏)
Content is King
Let’s think about content for a moment and what it entails. Sure, anyone can write content, but writing high-quality, valuable content requires a solid strategy. Someone masterful like Brian Grossman handles this challenge for both growing and established brands. Once the strategy is in place, the next step is writing the copy to spec… but not everyone can write content. In fact, a copywriter with the right style and industry expertise may be required. You wouldn’t hire a copywriter for a children’s toy brand to talk about pharmaceutical contraindications, would you?
Next, the copy goes through rounds of optimization. For example, content optimization includes keyword and keyphrase research and implementation. These are the words and phrases people are actually searching for (think perception vs. reality), and this can be achieved using readily and freely available real data from Google!
The implementation of the copy comes next. In very few cases, you can slap the content on a site and call it a day. This, of course, assumes that the pasted content is placed in the correct tags (e.g., “paragraph” tags instead of “div” tags). Actually, slapping content on a site is probably a bad idea. In any case, you’ll want to ensure the content structure is correct (e.g., heading levels like H1 or H2, paragraphs, ordered lists, unordered lists, hierarchical lists, etc.). Semantic page structure helps both search engines and AI systems accurately extract and summarize your content.
Technical Content Implementation
Technical content implementation is crucial to success. This is where I flex—or at least, pre-COVID Rob flexes. Even if you don’t know what this stuff means, you’ll want to be sure you work with someone who does. The technical side of copy implementation must be handled by someone who understands both (a) the value of the content that you invested in and (b) how to leverage technology to empower the content further quietly.
Slapping content on a page willy-nilly is likely not in your best interest. Strategically placing and using content is. Adding structured data markup (schema.org) to describe the content, intentionally linking to other internal webpages, using semantic HTML, stable page URLs, implementing metadata for clarity in titles and descriptions, and so forth, are all examples of how you can technically implement content. All of this enables you to be eligible for “enhanced results” on Google and other search engines. This also provides machine-readable signals that help AI systems extract and summarize content more accurately. There are several other ways to leverage technology, which vary by goal, but these examples serve as key use cases.
Lastly, you’ll want to be sure not to forget the basics like robots.txt, sitemap.xml, canonical URLs, XML sitemaps, and avoiding duplicate content. These are all items you can easily research and implement for quick wins. Some organizations are also experimenting with emerging files such as llms.txt, although adoption and support remain limited [9].
But we’re not done yet; there are more secrets to spill.
Provide an Exceptional User Experience
A great user experience is the glue between what your users want and what you want them to do. Okay, hear me out: imagine selling high-protein, low-carb snacks. Great idea, but there are likely thousands (if not tens of thousands) of other brands that do, too. So you define your brand strategy and differentiate to niche down, resulting in a better overall brand position. You then invest in your content and communications strategies to drive traffic. You then allocate capital to attract traffic through a variety of paid and strategic channels. Lastly, you set up a plethora of operations to handle everything from production to fulfillment.
Perfection, you’re ready to sell, you think.
Now that you’re attracting traffic, you need to convert it. You’re likely attracting traffic from the top, middle, and bottom of the funnel, and this traffic was most likely expensive to obtain. The last thing you want to do is spend capital on driving traffic only to unknowingly turn customers away. Well, now that you’re reading this, you’ll know how to avoid the costly mistake of unknowingly turning customers away by providing an excellent user experience.
First, let me say that I’m going to be very brief, and I’ve omitted many UX activities for brevity. In any case, you need to understand your user. You’ve likely defined your ideal customer profiles (“ICP” for short; also known as target personas or archetypes); if not, do so now. Not everyone can be your customer, and not everyone wants to be. Here, you’ll need to research and identify user needs, aspirations, goals, pain points, and more. You can also use a mix of qualitative and quantitative methods to uncover actionable insights into these users. Performing this step with an empathy-first approach will better help define your personas. You can then leverage research and data-driven decisions to finalize your personas.
Next, define your goals and determine what’s necessary to achieve them, aligned with the user’s needs. Afterwards, you can then test your ideas through research, observation, interviews, etc. This will ultimately lead you to designing the experience. What does the experience (website) look like? What microinteractions are in place? What calls-to-action (CTAs) do you have in place? Is everything written in clear, plain language without an overuse of idioms and cultural insensitivities? These are just a few questions to ask as you build the user experience.
Lastly, build the experience. You’ve invested in the UX strategy, so it’s important to build the experience with technology in mind without undermining it. Having technologists who understand the strategy and its value to build your experience is ideal. Implementing the strategy incorrectly not only undermines the probability of success but also sends the wrong signals to your customers. Technology is meant to improve our lives, not frustrate them.
An example of improving lives through technology is delivering fast-loading pages, reducing stress and frustration caused by slow load times. Ensure that primary Core Web Vitals (CWV) metrics are in the green (LCP, INP, and CLS), the site is secure, it works on all modern devices, including computers, tablets, and mobile phones, and it avoids distractions such as ads and pop-ups. While items like CWV won’t save bad content or experiences, they prevent preventable losses (bounces, pogo-sticking, friction) and support the overall building of trust.
Moreover, avoid intrusive interstitial screens, such as full-page email sign-up takeovers, and ensure your most important content is prioritized to stand out [6]. These are all examples of how technology should be used to implement your UX strategy. There are many more, but these are some core tenets to providing a great experience.
Note: these general guidelines do not account for signals such as page and domain authority, age, backlinks, and other factors beyond content and experience. This world is crazy deep, and we love it!
Using Authority & Citations to Boost AI Rankings
Having a content strategy and well-written content in place now affords you the opportunity to drive traffic. Having the UX strategy and design in place keeps users engaged and converts. The next step is to build authority and leverage citations. Pew found that the most frequently cited sources include Wikipedia, YouTube, and Reddit, which together accounted for about 15% of all cited sources [4]. This doesn’t mean spam these channels with useless content and keywords; rather, create new, unique content that’s not only relevant but also valuable. For example, for the snack brand mentioned earlier, create content that shows people how to make their own snacks. Perhaps providing recipes—not your secret recipe, but something of value—can help build trust and interest among users who just don’t have time and would rather buy from you.
Ultimately, you want to build content that is reference-worthy. Trash content won’t cut it (and, frankly, neither will AI-generated content).
Work towards making your brand ubiquitous. Be the Kleenex in the tissue world. The Coke in the soda world. It won’t happen overnight, but it’s a goal you can use to consistently go after.
This Is Great! Now What?
As you can see, strategy and content are important. Both of which also rest on proper technical implementation by someone who understands and appreciates strategy. Do note that a one-time run is typically insufficient for long-term growth. Content and user experience both require iterative changes to keep up with an ever-changing market, emerging competition, cultural and political shifts, and other internal and external influences. You cannot simply set it and forget it.
Keep in mind that I’ve only scratched the surface and touched upon two of the many practices we perform daily at 36. In any case, these principles and methodologies can help point you in the right direction if you decide to tackle these challenges yourself.
Lastly, it’s important to remember that these are general guidelines, and I must stress that traditional SEO fundamentals apply to both traditional and AI-augmented search experiences. Even Google itself states that “There are no additional requirements to appear in AI Overviews or AI Mode, nor are other special optimizations necessary” [7]. Search engines like Google do not publicly disclose their ranking algorithms, including those used for AI summaries, but they do outline SEO essentials for ranking [8]. Knowing this also provides further proof that there is no secret to ranking. Google, for example, publishes the goals that you need to know and execute on; getting there, however, is a different story.
Too busy? We get it. If this piques your interest and you don’t have time to do this work yourself, we’d love to hear from you. Our team works together to ensure we’re leaving no stones unturned and no communications foregone. We base all decisions on strategy. We make it better.
If anything is wrong, send me a constructive email and include a dad joke (I need to rebuild my inventory). Technology changes quickly, and I love to learn new methods and techniques!
References
[1] https://techcrunch.com/2025/07/25/ai-referrals-to-top-websites-were-up-357-year-over-year-in-june-reaching-1-13b/
[2] https://digiday.com/media/in-graphic-detail-the-state-of-ai-referral-traffic-in-2025/
[3] https://www.conductor.com/academy/aeo-geo-benchmarks-report/
[4] https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2025/07/22/google-users-are-less-likely-to-click-on-links-when-an-ai-summary-appears-in-the-results/
[5] https://developers.google.com/search/blog/2025/05/succeeding-in-ai-search
[6] https://developers.google.com/search/docs/appearance/page-experience
[7] https://developers.google.com/search/docs/appearance/ai-features
[8] https://developers.google.com/search/docs/essentials
Bonus link: https://blog.cloudflare.com/crawlers-click-ai-bots-training/ – Check out how AI bots are crawling the web!
